Danny O’Brien has posted a brilliant essay about the disappearance of the “private” sphere online — the place where you talk about stuff that isn’t a secret, but also isn’t intended for public distribution. It’s a response to some of the griping about the “Foo Camp” that O’Reilly threw last weekend, wherein a bunch of geeks that Tim likes were invited up to the O’Reilly offices to spend a weekend hanging out and playing and chatting.
If I was to be perfectly honest, if you were to hover about fifty yards away from the festivities, squinting with your eyebrow arched, it was like that. Were Andrew to hide in the bushes of Sebastopol, he would have had very little of his convictions shaken. People said “ohhhhh cool!”. A lot. There was a Segway and an Aibo. There was one particular “acoustic jam” that had me choking on pie and making a polite exit to the bathroom.
But you know what? I can do the same thing to your parties. It’s easy. And with a few hours training and a dictionary of convenient stereotypes, you could hang out in the shadows of a J-Lo-hosted all-nude sex-party and feel superior too…
Much can be made of all of this, but without more substantive points, it’s just “Hahahahaha! Aren’t the Different People funny?”. Yes, it was Californian. This is because we are in California.. .